- The fear of not ‘being’ someone or something
- The fear of being rejected and alone
- The fear of the uncontrollable
For the three bullet points above, discuss how these types of fear are presented in Frankenstein. You can use characters, events or a combination of both to explain how Shelley teaches us about these fears. In addition, you should address the impacts that these fears had on the characters in the text- what did it motivate them to do and what were the consequences of the action they took?
The fear of not ‘being’ someone or something
Frankenstein story follows the idea of fear, Dr fransktein himself was fearful that if he didn’t achieve and be something then he would let himself down, the way he choose to express himself as being something wasn’t through a respective way – creating a creature to satisfy his interest in death. This created anxiety of the outcome for fransketien and had a negative impact on him as a character, and then lead him to sacrificing his friends rather than facing the creature. The creature went from being nothing to something when he was re born , he daily faced the idea of not being something, he came into the world with cluelessness and seen as nothing, a monster rather than a human being with the ability to feel emotions.
- The fear of being rejected and alone
- the creature goes through the story by being born into an unborn world , followed by being abandoned this goes onto him trying to help people yet again being pushed aside and chased – being called a monster and a horrid sight. not only being alone but being isolated in the story is a large part, fransketin sets himself away from the social world to work on his own work, fransktein suffers being alone through his mother dying and separating himself from his family and friends.
- The fear of the uncontrollable- After creating his creature Frankestein comes across the fear of the uncontrollable, the creature sets loose and causes terror by killing people, fransktein understands that he can’t stop him as he is stronger and faster than him, this can also be a mental thing for Fransktein, knowing that something he created can’t be controlled ad he has no ability to stop him. The creatures fear of the uncontrollable is slightly different, he can’t control how people view him and react to him, he doesn’t know that if he shows himself to the villagers which he has been helping how they are going to react to him, he can control his anger problems after being shunned and abandoned
These aspects of fear create the characters throughout the story, they are self reliable and they learn to not count on others but to stand for themselves- which can also turn into greed as the story goes on, the consqueces show to be death of loved ones and being hated
Mary Shelley shows the idea of fear throughout her story to us, through